Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Boris Johnson: Global overpopulation is the real issue

I really liked this article, which is from 2007.

Depending on how fast you read, the population of the planet is growing with every word that skitters beneath your eyeball. There are more than 211,000 people being added every day, and a population the size of Germany every year.

As someone who has now been travelling around the world for decades, I see this change, and I feel it. You can smell it in the traffic jams of the Middle East. You can see it as you fly over Africa at night, and you see mile after mile of fires burning red in the dark, as the scrub is removed to make way for human beings.

The Telegraph

Boris Johnson: Global overpopulation is the real issue


Arithmetic, Population, and Energy, a talk by Al Bartlett 


6 comments:

Matt Franko said...

Kevin here fyi:

https://nypost.com/2020/05/09/new-york-mom-with-coronavirus-saved-by-medical-student-son/

Dr allegedly helped mother get over COVID symptoms with an OTC anti-inflammatory supplement...

caveat emptor but might be something to know about...

Also maybe drink a bit of quinine water throughout the day...

Kaivey said...

Thanks, Matt. I will check it out. I'm getting some vitamin D right now sitting in the garden in the sun.

Marian Ruccius said...

Except it is not true -- if we all consumed all at the level, say of Costa Rica, a perfectly livable level, then the population problem (which i is obviously real) would be much less serious. The problem is that North-Americans and Europeans consume so much beyond their needs. And increasingly portions of BRIC countries as well. What we need is a low- or degrowth model, to replace the obsession with the production of positional (private) goods, with many more public goods, shared by all or by communities.

Matt Franko said...

" if we all consumed all at the level, say of Costa Rica,"

No thanks!

Matt Franko said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ralph Musgrave said...

And once we've been consuming at the rate of Costa Rica for a few decades, and assuming the population continues to increase, we will then need to consume at the rate of cave men and women......:-)